Lukashenka says he is ready to cooperate with Ukraine's new president11

Lukashenka has announced his readiness to cooperate with the new Ukrainian leadership.

Lukashenka's press service told Interfax that he had made this statement on Thursday during a meeting with Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of Russia's parliament, and the heads of Russian regions attending the first regional forum of Belarus and Russia.

"A new president has been elected in Ukraine. I believe we will cooperate with the new president and the new authorities because our people live there. These people are just like us - these people, who are kind and hardworking, have simply found themselves in such a situation," he said.

"Certainly, we can say that we have nothing to do with them, but people will only suffer more in this case," Lukashenka said.

Bolstering ties between regions will give a very powerful impetus to any integration processes in former Soviet soil, and will even become "the locomotive" of such processes, the Belarusian ruler said, calling on Kazakh and Ukrainian regions to join them.